


One Last Drive

by YouMayKnowMeAsAngel



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Carrie Underwood - Freeform, F/F, Road Trips, and Holy Shit Girls Are Beautiful Help, and also HELP I HAVE A CRUSH ON MY BEST FRIEND WHAT NOW, annabeth - Freeform, as well as a certain someboy, as well as a study of Coming Out To Yourself, but yeah this shit's gonna be deep, cheezits, hear me out, homophobia discussions, internalized heteronormativity, it's honestly a study of how i think things would be if percy was a queer girl, no relation to grover underwood, ok this fic is self indulgent, over a big roadtrip across the united states, queer issues, realizing she's not straight, serious discussions of harry potter, stressed out kids, this is an wlw percabeth story, which explores angst and wlw issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 16:36:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13979190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouMayKnowMeAsAngel/pseuds/YouMayKnowMeAsAngel
Summary: “Nervous?” Percy asked, eyes on the road.“Nope. You?”“No way.”They grinned at each other. For once, Annabeth didn’t fight against the warm feeling growing in her stomach, and sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening that her happiness would never go away. It felt like an ending of those old movies her dad loved, when the music swelled and Gregory Peck said one last cheesy line before kissing his favorite girl. Triumph and relief and everything they deserved.Annabeth allowed herself a small, hidden smile as the weather shifted from magical summer sunshine to foggy Long Island gloominess. Things were looking up.--Lesbian Percabeth Roadtrip. Yup. You read that right.





	One Last Drive

**Author's Note:**

> hi this is Indulgent 
> 
> read the tags and the notes at the end
> 
> this first chapter is pretty short, it's really just a teaser for what's to come.

“Snacks?”

“Check.”

“Water bottles?”

“Check.”

“Blankets?”

“Check.”

“Awesome eighties playlist?”

“Nope.”

“It’s a road trip necessity!”

“Not gonna happen.”

“How can you say that? _How can you say that?”_

“Percy—”

“I’ve got Cher on this thing! C-H-E-R.”

“Percy, we’ve been over this, like, ten times.”

“If you’d listen to it—“

“I have, I hated it, it’s not coming, it made my ears bleed.”

“Well, yeah, but the Apollo cabin cursed all of my music that week.”

“Gee, I wonder why?”

“Ha! Sarcasm! Painful! This playlist is coming with us.”

“Fine. And maybe I’ll forget to pack the rainbow colored goldfish.”

“…You wouldn’t.”

“Oh?”

“No. You’re not that homophobic.”

Annabeth laughed despite herself. Of course Percy would try to pull that one, though it didn’t have the same effect as it used to. Twelve-year-old Annabeth would have been a stuttering, blushing, angry mess after a comment like that. Twelve-year-old Percy would have laughed her ass off.

Annabeth smiled up at her friend, who was lounging on the hood of her bright red jeep, watching Annabeth do all the packing. “Alright, I’ll bring the rainbow goldfish.”

Percy threw up a fist.

“But I’m leaving out the blue ones.”

Percy lowered her fist. “There’s no blue ones in the rainbow pack,” she grumbled. “Don’t sass me.”

“Only if you get your sweaty ass off my hood.”

“I don’t sweat, I glisten.” 

Annabeth rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Then get your glistening ass off my hood. We have to be on the road by six if we want to beat traffic.”

Percy shot her a wide grin. She swung her long legs up in the air and rolled off the jeep, almost flashing Annabeth in the process. Annabeth had warned her against wearing booty shorts on a long road trip, but she had to admit they looked good. Percy’s dark skin soaked up sun like a sponge. Her legs were practically sparkling.

“Watcha' looking at, wise girl?” Percy teased, wiggling her eyebrows.

Annabeth lowered her sunglasses down her nose. “Your lack of tan lines. You haven’t been skinny dipping again, right?”

“Nah.” She cocked a hip out. “That’s all natural, baby.”

Annabeth snorted. “Get in the car, Jackson.”

Percy clambered into the driver’s seat. They had agreed she would drive for the first two hours, something Annabeth was more than happy about. Long Island traffic always got the best of her temper.

“HEY! Where they hell do you think you’re going?!”

Annabeth turned around, easily spotting Rachel Elizabeth Dare at the top of Half Blood hill. She smiled, and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Far away from you!”

Percy stuck her head out of the jeep. “Yeah! We’re ditching this dump!”

Rachel laughed as she jogged down the hill, her bare feet covered in dirt and grass. She picked up speed near the bottom, and Annabeth had about three seconds to brace herself before the tackle hug. She tried not to suffocate as she was engulfed in curly red hair. 

“I can’t believe you two are finally doing this!” Rachel cried, pulling away to give Percy a hug through the car window.

Percy gripped her tight with both arms, almost falling out of the jeep. “I can’t believe Chiron’s letting us do this!”

“Who cares what he says, we needed a break.”

Rachel gave Annabeth a look. “That is the understatement of the century. Still, safety first. You both got your weapons?” 

Annabeth began listing. “Three large daggers on me at the moment, four small knives in this bag, some poison darts from the Demeter cabin, a spear, a machete—“

“We’re prepared for any monster or godly disturbance,” Percy cut her off. Annabeth smiled.

“Good,” Rachel said with a quick nod of her head. “And I assume you’ve already given your tearful farewells?”

“Yeah. Tyson cried enough tears for everybody, even after we promised to Iris message him in the hotel rooms.”

“He’s just worried. He has every right to be.”

Percy shrugged. “Sure, but this year hasn’t been that bad, in terms of disasters. No major prophecies to worry about.” She gave Rachel a look. “Yet.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Annabeth said darkly, “The last thing we need is for this trip to turn into a quest.”

Rachel held her fingers up to her temples, and began to chant in a dramatic voice, _“Two shall travel in a red Chevrolet—“_

Annabeth shoved her to one side. Percy laughed. 

“Nah, don’t worry. I have it on good authority you guys will be safe on this trip.”

Annabeth and Percy shared a look. “Whose authority?” Percy asked.

“The oracle. She seems to believe you two have a _no touchy_ deal with the gods. For the time being.”

Percy’s shoulders relaxed by a fraction. Annabeth couldn’t help but agree. The past year, after the Battle of Olympus, had been surprisingly uneventful. She’d had her suspicions the gods were attempting to give them some space, but it was nice to have them confirmed. She wasn’t naive enough to think they wouldn’t run into any trouble on the road, but the less godly interference the better.

Such is the life of a half-blood.

Annabeth studied Rachel, trying once again to see how sharing a body with an ancient oracle was affecting her friend. She still looked like Rachel Elizabeth Dare, with the paint stained school uniform and the crazy hair. Nothing to suggest this seventeen-year-old girl was harboring a powerful force within her soul. 

Then again, most people who looked at Percy and Annabeth usually assumed they were YMCA camp counselors or something. Annabeth had trouble seeing her best friend as the savior of the world and the bearer of Achille’s curse. The image didn’t exactly fit with the dorky teenager stuffing her face full of pizza flavored Cheez-it’s.

“Those are for the road,” Annabeth said, swiping the box out of Percy’s hands. 

“Then let’s get on the road! I’m ready to go!” Percy snapped back.

“Yeah, you two will be fine,” Rachel said, a small smile on her face. She made eye-contact with Percy, and the two had one of their silent conversations. Knowing they would appreciate a few minutes alone, Annabeth gave Rachel one last hug and focussed all her attention on throwing two weaponry duffel bags into the trunk.

She tried to ignore the phantom pangs of jealousy as Rachel leaned close to whisper something in Percy’s ear. Annabeth had long since gotten over her petty rivalry with Percy’s friend. Rachel was truly a wonderful girl who shared so much in common with Annabeth, it would be stupid to let something as pathetic as her own protective issues get in the way of an awesome friendship. Besides, Rachel had been there for Percy when Annabeth hadn’t, during the school year after the Labyrinth. 

_We still haven’t talked about it,_ Annabeth thought. _Now would be the perfect time. Open road, no distractions…_

She slammed the trunk shut with a bit more force than necessary. This road trip was about enjoying what they had left of summer, making memories and forgetting the bad stuff. Bringing up the bad stuff was not a good idea. 

Besides, Rachel had done more for Percy than Annabeth ever could. At least with the whole, “being gay and angry” thing. 

Annabeth peeked her head around the jeep and cleared her throat. Rachel took a step back from Percy, who looked a bit shocked at whatever she just said. 

“You two done?” Annabeth asked.

“Yup!” Rachel said cheerfully. Percy stared ahead with a blank expression. “Where are you guys meeting Grover?”

“California. Percy wants to try to convince him to go to Disneyland. Satyr’s get discounts.”

Rachel’s eyes widened. “California?!”

Annabeth smiled. “I know, we’re driving the whole way.”

“Go big or go home,” Percy said weakly.

Rachel watched as Annabeth climbed into the passenger’s seat, a strange expression on her face.

“You worried about us?” Annabeth teased, leaning forward to rest her chin on Percy’s shoulder. “Don’t think we can handle it?”

Rachel smirked and put her hands on her hips. “Please. If any girls can make it across America and back in a beat up old jeep, it’s you two idiots.”

“My jeep is not beat up,” Annabeth grumbled.

Percy bumped her shoulder to bounce Annabeth’s chin. “It kinda is.”

Rachel slapped the side door. “I expect regular check in’s, else I’m sending the entire camp after your asses.”

“Gotcha.” Percy twisted the key into the ignition. Nothing. She tried again. The jeep shuddered a bit. She muttered a prayer to the god of crappy cars, and tried a third time. The engine roared to life. “There we go!”

“Don’t burn down the camp while we’re gone, Dare!” Annabeth cried as they pulled away from Half Blood hill.

“No promises, Chase!” Rachel shouted back, waving as they drove off. Annabeth watched her friend’s figure grow smaller in the rearview mirror, only looking away when Rachel was merely a speck of red in the distance.

“Nervous?” Percy asked, eyes on the road.

“Nope. You?”

“No way.” 

They grinned at each other. For once, Annabeth didn’t fight against the warm feeling growing in her stomach, and sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening that her happiness would never go away. It felt like an ending of those old movies her dad loved, when the music swelled and Gregory Peck said one last cheesy line before kissing his favorite girl. Triumph and relief and everything they deserved. 

Annabeth allowed herself a small, hidden smile as the weather shifted from magical summer sunshine to foggy Long Island gloominess. Things were looking up.

:

:

:

_“I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive,”_

“This isn’t eighties music.”

_“Carved my name into his leather seats!”_

“Like, this is straight-up Carrie Underwood.”

“ _I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights, I slashed a hole in ALL four tires,”_

“Carrie fucking Underwood.”

Percy leaned close to breathe the last chorus line into Annabeth’s ear. _“Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.”_

“I could kill you without taking my eyes off the road, Jackson.”

Percy flopped back into her seat with a laugh, making the jeep bounce as she moved. “Man, my mom loves that song, we used to scream the lyrics at each other all the time. Pretty sure she was thinking about my dad while she sang it.” She paused, then said, “Yeah, she was totally thinking about my dad.”

“I’m imagining your mom sawing the spokes off Poseidon’s chariot wheels.”

“She’d want me to film it.”

“She could make a youtube channel for pranking the gods.”

Percy winced. “Connor and Travis already tried that, remember?” 

“Oh, right. Have their curses worn off yet?”

“Sort of? Travis still ribbits on occasion.”

They both suppressed a shudder. The goddess Leto was rather partial to frogs.

“Speaking of the amazing Sally Jackson,” Annabeth prompted, glancing over her shoulder before changing lanes, “You called her, right?”

“‘Course I did. Love that woman. She said Paul wants plenty of pictures.”

“And thanks to the Hecate cabin, that’s totally possible.”

Percy leaned forward and hauled her backpack into her lap. After a few moments of rummaging, she pulled out a cheap looking polaroid camera. Out of the corner of Annabeth’s eye, she could notice the slight glowing aura. The Hecate cabin’s leader, a mysterious kid named Forest, had “charmed” the polaroid to ensure no monsters would be attracted to its use. 

“I would argue this thing isn’t really tech anymore,” Percy said, observing the camera from different angles. With a shrug, she placed it on the dash. “Better safe than sorry, I guess.”

“The unlimited film is nice.”

“Not to mention we get to be hipster road trip girls who only take polaroid pics.”

Annabeth laughed. “You gotta promise me we’ll hang the pictures with indoor christmas lights.”

“Wait, what’s the difference between christmas lights and indoor christmas lights?”

Annabeth started slowly. “Well, one is used indoors, and—“

Percy threw a playful punch, not hard enough to bruise, but definitely hard enough to cause a yelp. She followed up with a tickle attempt.

“Stop it, idiot!” Annabeth shrieked. “You’re gonna make me crash! You’ll kill us both!”

_“A car crash kill Lily and James Potter?!”_ Percy cried in a horrible Hagrid impression, her fingers dancing over Annabeth’s thighs. _“Never!”_

Annabeth shoved her off, still snickering. “Nerd.”

“You love it.”

“Only if I get to be Lily.”

Percy scoffed, running a hand through her hair to get it out of her face. “You’re Ginny and you know it.”

Annabeth weighed the definite pros and cons of being Ginny Weasley. After a moment, she decided, “People say I’m like Hermione. You know, because of the whole…” She gestured vaguely.

“Yeah, and they’d be wrong. You’re much more than that.”

Annabeth took her eyes away from the road. Percy probably knew she was staring, but didn’t look over. She was fiddling with the polaroid camera again, looking a bit too intent for someone who despised minuscule details. If Annabeth were to guess, and she was pretty good at guessing what Percy was thinking, she’d say Percy was avoiding some sort of conversation. Again. 

So she turned away and thought about Hermione Granger. Annabeth had tried to read Harry Potter when she attended that boarding school with Thalia, and hated it. Back then, Annabeth was really struggling with her dyslexia, and every word was an assault on her senses. It was only much later, when one of her cabin mates let her borrow _The_ _Sorcerer’s Stone,_ that she started to realize something about relating to childhood characters.

In the beginning, she loved Hermione. It wasn’t hard to understand the feeling of being ostracized for knowing too much. Later on, Harry became someone she cherished. Feeling cast out, not really having a true home, finding solace in friends and a place he could escape to, but frustration when the truth was never revealed to him. She supposed Percy had a love-hate relationship with Harry. The whole “prophecy controlling my life and the way others view me” probably hit a bit too close to home.

“You know, you’re probably right,” she said.

“That’s a first.”

Annabeth nudged Percy’s shoulder with her elbow. “Don’t sell yourself short, Seaweed Brain. You can be very insightful.”

Percy shrugged, holding up the polaroid. “I call it my gaydar.” She snapped a picture at the precise moment Annabeth gave her an unamused look. Snickering to herself, she shook the printed photo. “So, Wise Girl, what was I right about?”

“Me being like Ginny.” Annabeth began to plot how she might attempt to steal and burn the photo within the next six hours. “It sort of makes sense when you think about it. Our pasts are similar.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” She listed off the points slowly and surely, as if they weren’t just coming to her. “She has a lot of people she looks up to, older kids who care too much about protecting her. She idolizes a boy, becoming infatuated with him at an alarmingly young age. She gets tricked into trusting someone evil, who uses her.” She grinned, a bit sarcastically. “Sounds pretty familiar.”

The jeep fell silent. Annabeth immediately regretted everything she just said, and her palms started to sweat on the steering wheel. _Fuck, shit, gods, why did I say that?! This trip was supposed to be about having fun and not thinking about the bad stuff—_

“Well, okay, but I was thinking more along the lines of Ginny being a total badass,” Percy said. Annabeth froze. “Like, sure, she gets possessed by teenage Voldemort, but she gets through it. She learns how to protect herself, how to break out of her shell and fight for what she believes in. She doesn’t take shit from anybody.” 

Annabeth glanced over at her friend. “And that’s how you see me?”

Percy shrugged. “Yeah. That’s how I’ve always seen you.”

The thing about Percy was she could be completely, utterly, hopelessly sincere. It was always a bit disarming.

“Well, you’re definitely Harry,” Annabeth said, changing the subject before she got too sappy and sad and pathetic.

Percy settled into her seat with a sigh. “Lemme guess. The whole _chosen one_ thing?”

“No. The whole _self-sacrificing_ thing, you big dork.”

“Ok, that was only, like, five times—“

“Six.”

“Five.”

_“Six._ I’m counting that time on kitchen duty.” Percy threw her a glare. Annabeth grinned. “Face it, Seaweed Brain,” she said cheerfully. “You’re a self-sacrificing hero.”

Percy grumbled something mean, then said, “Takes one to know one.”

“Nope. My flaw is pride, remember?”

“I remember Hephaestus’ forge.”

Annabeth was surprised. They didn’t talk about Hephaestus’ forge. Or Percy’s “death”. Or Calypso’s island.

_Especially_ Calypso’s island.

But, if Percy wanted to talk about it now, Annabeth was going to pretend as though it wasn’t a big deal. “The way I remember it,” she said, “was you coming up with a dumb plan to blow up the forge, and basically telling me to run. Which I did. Not very self-sacrificing, if you ask me.”

“I wasn’t talking about blowing up the forge.”

Annabeth looked over. Percy was slumped down in her seat, staring out her window. Her face was turned away, but Annabeth had the sneaking suspicion she was angry.

Hephaestus’ forge wasn’t something Annabeth liked to remember. The Labryinth in general was one big black horrible scourge in her mind. Somehow, the knowledge that the maze was trying to kill you, failed to make you feel better about the maze trying to kill you. Sure, she could admire the morbid beauty of the design, but a bird can’t really appreciate its cage. Annabeth could only look back on the ordeal, and be glad that Percy was with her. 

Still, she could remember a specific moment, when the darkness was getting to her. She could hear the walls shifting around them as they slept, and she wished she was alone. Annabeth wished her friends weren’t with her, so that she wouldn’t have to see them die. The thought had scared her, because she never allowed herself to be that pessimistic, but it had taunted her all the way to Hepaestus’ forge. Then Percy told her to run, the forge blew up, and Annabeth got her wish.

But not before she did something stupid. She acted on a pathetic impulse, and listened to a very stupid voice in her head which told her to _do something_ before it was too late. She kissed Percy before running off. Annabeth couldn’t remember much about it. She was too panicked, scared, and angry at the time. All she could really recall was how she had grabbed Percy by the shoulders, and then the expression on Percy’s face before she ran away. The look of utter hopelessness haunted her when she thought Percy had died

There were reasons Annabeth didn’t like talking about certain things, painful memories being at the top of the list.

“We’re pulling over to pee,” she said, breaking the silence.

Percy jumped a bit, startled out of whatever she had been thinking. “What, here? Now?”

“No, dipshit, when I see a place to stop.”

Percy made a big show of looking out the car window. “I don’t know, the side of this bridge could work. If we squat correctly.”

Their laughter filled the small space of the jeep, and the tension found a place to settle. Annabeth could only hope it would stay that way, for the majority of the trip.

**Author's Note:**

> hello hi so this fic is not like anything i've done before. it's prob gonna get pretty personal, as a lot of the issues being discussed are about gay girl experiences. nothing too serious, but there will be plenty of angst and plenty of ridiculous fluff.
> 
> Creds to http://reynaisalesbian.tumblr.com/, who inspired a lot of this.


End file.
